Allow me to clarify:In my music world most raps are horror movies.Too much sexually suggestive and obscenities in them for me to see them as child friendly. I don’t care if they’re a black culture thing. Even if it’s from any culture I’d still dislike it. I don’t think this is racist, the type of music often has certain aspects of it that would make it R rated.Does it matter that a certain culture/group of people commonly enjoys it? I don’t.

So in your view, you may think Rap is a child’s movie. Perfectly fine for children to watch/listen to, and not at all frightening. That’s fine, but I personally would disagree, but we’re differnt people.

Please point out what makes you believe this to be racist so I may be more considerate in the future and less likely to offend people.

My meta for future reference

Spoiler:

cemper93 wrote:Your meta appears to be "just writes whatever is on his mind and doesn't remember what happened more than five hours ago"

First, what's with conflating horror with sexuality and obscenities? Does porn = rap for you as well? And also, why don't you compare this to Martin Scorsese films, Quentin Tarantino films, David Cronenberg films? There are plenty of pasty white guys' movies that have way more violence, nudity, and sexuality than your average rap song. Why don't you call this the "Game of Thrones" of music?

natraj wrote:in itself the stereotype of rap as being full of sexual/violent imagery [significantly moreso than other genres of popular music] comes from racism.

Thank you, this was not something I was aware of becuase I personally get this setreotype from what kids around me listen to, as it’s the only time I hear rap. I did not realize that it could be seen as having racist origins.I understand what a bunch of middleschoolers listen to probably isn’t the best sampling size, but it’s the one I’ve been given.

I can see what I said could be seen as racist, but I hope I’ve better explained myself. Horror movies was a bad choice of words. I personally don’t care who the main artists are, what their ethnicity is. The rap music I hear is very explicit, and I was comparing it to a genre of movies that (to me again) normally is explicit.

I believe my main problem was ignorance of the racism behind the stereotype. I now know better.

Sorry if I offended or angered anyone, I wasn’t trying to be racist, I didn’t know it was racist. I will try and stop (angering? Offending?) people who see it as racist.

My meta for future reference

Spoiler:

cemper93 wrote:Your meta appears to be "just writes whatever is on his mind and doesn't remember what happened more than five hours ago"

Zohar wrote:First, what's with conflating horror with sexuality and obscenities? Does porn = rap for you as well? And also, why don't you compare this to Martin Scorsese films, Quentin Tarantino films, David Cronenberg films? There are plenty of pasty white guys' movies that have way more violence, nudity, and sexuality than your average rap song. Why don't you call this the "Game of Thrones" of music?

I’ve never watched game of thrones...I don’t care if the movies are made by white people. I’m sorry? Does it matter that white people make (what I think is) bad movies? This isn’t me hating the people themselves, just dislikeing the genre of music and comparing it to a movie genre I thought were similar... which I probably shouldn’t have done.I’ve never even heard of those people.I don’t watch porn either.However I have heard of horror movies and stuff.So that is why I compared it to that.I don’t think calling it “game of thrones” music would make it any worse. As I’ve already said, it was bad choice of words, as it was the first “R” genre that came to my head. Comparing it to game of thrones would have probably offended morn people.

My meta for future reference

Spoiler:

cemper93 wrote:Your meta appears to be "just writes whatever is on his mind and doesn't remember what happened more than five hours ago"

I actually like some horror movies. And some rap. Not all, because, well, 90% of everything is shit. Pop and kids movies are both easy viewing junk that are just bland enough for everyone to be able to watch without being too offended. Rap and horror movies are both a different kind of viewing than pop and kids movies and the change in genres IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PIECE is obnoxious. Imagine if instead of Big Sean in Feels, they just stuck in Skrillex. You have Pharell nailing his singing, Katy singing the chorus, back to Pharell, then Katy, then WUBWUBWUB EEEEZZZXXEEEEE WUBWUBWUB. It'd be just as awful, even for the people who can tolerate dubstep.

You can have a rap-pop crossover like LL Cool J, or rap rock, or country rap, etc. You can have horror movies for kids like Nightmare before Christmas. Pausing a pop song for a rap does not make the pop song any better, any more than pausing a kids movie for a horror or thriller or action movie would.

As for rap being more "adult"? That was Tipper Gore's fault, but really Al Gore and Strom Thurmond, who were trying to introduce a blank tape tax to eliminate both piracy and independent artists. However, the rap industry EMBRACED the tipper sticker, so it's not exactly unfair.

You're all the more a nonpartisan dark. NANJIANI So it's not all awful … By the time they're done, Judge's hands have loose into his lap, and he's murmuring with chuckling so uproarious you ponder whether it will divert the performing artists.

CorruptUser wrote:I actually like some horror movies. And some rap. Not all, because, well, 90% of everything is shit. Pop and kids movies are both easy viewing junk that are just bland enough for everyone to be able to watch without being too offended.

The vast majority of music is deliberately made to appeal to people who don't give a shit what's playing in the background, as long as it's popular. That's why most pop at any given time sounds pretty much the same. The industry sees what people are buying and pushes more of that thing. The more they push, the more people buy; and the more people buy, the more they push. Every now and then something different gets enough notice to throw the cycle off track; and then that becomes the new popular thing.

And part of that is not being too racy or violent or whatever; because the whole point is to appeal to the widest audience possible.

Rap and horror movies are both a different kind of viewing than pop and kids movies and the change in genres IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PIECE is obnoxious. Imagine if instead of Big Sean in Feels, they just stuck in Skrillex. You have Pharell nailing his singing, Katy singing the chorus, back to Pharell, then Katy, then WUBWUBWUB EEEEZZZXXEEEEE WUBWUBWUB. It'd be just as awful, even for the people who can tolerate dubstep.

Yuck.

You can have a rap-pop crossover like LL Cool J, or rap rock, or country rap, etc. You can have horror movies for kids like Nightmare before Christmas. Pausing a pop song for a rap does not make the pop song any better, any more than pausing a kids movie for a horror or thriller or action movie would.

I really enjoy a lot of the crossover stuff, but you're right... it can't just be splicing two different sounds into a song. The really cool stuff is when they do something that actually combines different genres into one sound.

As for rap being more "adult"? That was Tipper Gore's fault, but really Al Gore and Strom Thurmond, who were trying to introduce a blank tape tax to eliminate both piracy and independent artists. However, the rap industry EMBRACED the tipper sticker, so it's not exactly unfair.

I remember as a kid buying heavy metal, the sticker was a selling point; bands would go out of their way to get that sticker. It's one of the best examples ever of government trying to do something that needn't be done in the first place, and getting exactly the opposite result from what they wanted.

morriswalters wrote:If the specialty controls have copyrighted code as part of the functionality, then you are at the mercy of the manufacturer, should he discontinue support. There is a vigorous after market otherwise.

What might the downsides be if a law was passed such that code for the function of a particular part would only be considered copyrighted if support for the machine was still available in a timely fashion?

So if support for a machine has stopped, all code, design elements and innovations (ie. everything other than trademarks) would not have copyright applied to it. Anyone would be allowed to make and sell parts for old machines, or in fact, make new machines that were identical to the old unsupported machine.

That sounds roughly equivalent to a copyright that only prohibits copying as long as the work remains in publication. While that helps in terms of making works as available as possible, it also denies the owner any right to deliberately makt their work unavailable (e.g. George Lucas stopping the distribution of the original Star Wars versions in order to replace them completely with the reimagined versions). While some people may consider this also to be a good thing, there ARE quite a lot of people (and not merely politicians) who would wish to retain the right to rescind their own publications.

ijuin wrote:That sounds roughly equivalent to a copyright that only prohibits copying as long as the work remains in publication. While that helps in terms of making works as available as possible, it also denies the owner any right to deliberately makt their work unavailable (e.g. George Lucas stopping the distribution of the original Star Wars versions in order to replace them completely with the reimagined versions). While some people may consider this also to be a good thing, there ARE quite a lot of people (and not merely politicians) who would wish to retain the right to rescind their own publications.

Should that be allowed for physical products though? I can understand communications that might later be retracted as they become false/non-representative of the present, but physical products don't change how they operate no matter when they are.

Though, I can see exceptions to that (meaning retaining copyright) being allowed for things like safety recalls or defective design, and other such matters where the manufacturer recalls a product and stops supporting it in order to fix a problem so it can be issued at a later date.

ijuin wrote:That sounds roughly equivalent to a copyright that only prohibits copying as long as the work remains in publication. While that helps in terms of making works as available as possible, it also denies the owner any right to deliberately makt their work unavailable (e.g. George Lucas stopping the distribution of the original Star Wars versions in order to replace them completely with the reimagined versions). While some people may consider this also to be a good thing, there ARE quite a lot of people (and not merely politicians) who would wish to retain the right to rescind their own publications.

Should that be allowed for physical products though? I can understand communications that might later be retracted as they become false/non-representative of the present, but physical products don't change how they operate no matter when they are.

Though, I can see exceptions to that (meaning retaining copyright) being allowed for things like safety recalls or defective design, and other such matters where the manufacturer recalls a product and stops supporting it in order to fix a problem so it can be issued at a later date.

Solution: Every product designed with a loose bolt that attaches nothing together, all products recallable whenever manufacturer wants to permanently take off market.

CorruptUser wrote:Solution: Every product designed with a loose bolt that attaches nothing together, all products recallable whenever manufacturer wants to permanently take off market.

Or just do what apple does and brick the old phones.

Recall must require intention to fix and resale, and if no resale is done within a time period (say six months), the product is considered 'off the market' and no longer protected by copyright.

Even if a product can be bricked remotely, if it's no longer copyright protected because it's no longer sold or supported, everyone else can just copy the design and software to make as they wish if the market still wants new ones.

I mean there is some sliding scale of difficulty here and various definitions need to be cleared up (like what does it actually mean by being able to sell? if only one store in the entire world sells a particular design, does that still count?). We could be here all day, but the primary intention was that 'physical products no longer made or supported by the manufacturer are not copyright protected', so if someone gets sued for copyright infringement, the company performing the suing has to demonstrate that they are still actively selling or maintaining the product in order to claim copyright applies.

I’d give a year rather than six months due to how slow institutions tend to move, but yes, suits alleging copyright infringement should be required to demonstrate that losses from infringement are more than merely hypothetical.

jseah wrote:[T]he primary intention was that 'physical products no longer made or supported by the manufacturer are not copyright protected', so if someone gets sued for copyright infringement, the company performing the suing has to demonstrate that they are still actively selling or maintaining the product in order to claim copyright applies.

A vinyl record would qualify. If a musician who once sold xis song on a vinyl record stops selling them that way, does the underlying copyright disappear? What if they don't sell their song at all any more, for any number of artistic reasons - do they lose control of their creative intellectual property?

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

ijuin wrote:That sounds roughly equivalent to a copyright that only prohibits copying as long as the work remains in publication. While that helps in terms of making works as available as possible, it also denies the owner any right to deliberately makt their work unavailable (e.g. George Lucas stopping the distribution of the original Star Wars versions in order to replace them completely with the reimagined versions). While some people may consider this also to be a good thing, there ARE quite a lot of people (and not merely politicians) who would wish to retain the right to rescind their own publications.

The difference is that this has the purpose of maintaining a good purchased not producing more. While this may entail producing parts which are goods no longer manufactured it would not have to allow someone to produce all the parts and build a new item. In the Star Wars case, under current copyright law, it is completely legal for me to back up my old copy of Star Wars to preserve my ability to use it but I cannot create a copy to give to someone else to allow new viewing of it.

CorruptUser wrote:Solution: Every product designed with a loose bolt that attaches nothing together, all products recallable whenever manufacturer wants to permanently take off market.

Companies can't just recall a product without compensation. It actually seems fair to say a manufacturer can pay to recall a product if they don't want it on the market but owners should have a right to maintain goods that they own so if the manufacturer will not provide maintenance and will not recall the product and compensate the owners fairly for it, they should not be able to use copyright to prevent the owner from getting maintenance elsewhere.

A compromise might be for copyright holders to be required to renew their copyright each year for a token fee. Basically, you would fill out a form every year and send in ten bucks or something to maintain the exclusivity part of your copyright. Or every three years or something—the point being that the holder must actively maintain the claim in some manner. This would discourage the practice of a work being out of print yet decades away from public domain.

So... basically the way that movie studios come out with utter crap that is never meant to see the light of day for the express purpose of keeping the rights to a book/comic series, and then the losses from those movies are written off as business expenses against unrelated, better movies.

ijuin wrote:A compromise might be for copyright holders to be required to renew their copyright each year for a token fee.

Those "token fees" add up for individuals who engage in creative pursuits, and the requirement of renewing every year is more than a nuisance. It's a trap for those who get distracted (say by an elderly mother, a car crash, or any number of events that can make you miss a deadline. All it takes is once and you're toasted.

No, this is not a compromise. This is a travesty.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

What I'd like to see is that the characters of an old work are still copyrighted but the stories themselves are fair game. For instance, only Disney may make new Mickey Mouse cartoons, but anyone in the world can produce a Fantasia DVD.

I think there should be a legal distinction between copyrights that pertain to works of an artistic or intellectual nature vs. commercial products that are created entirely for the purpose of profit. And I think there's a very easy way to do this. All copyrights held by corporations would be commercial product copyrights, because corporations only create things to profit from them. Copyrights held by the creator would be artistic/intellectual copyrights. Or maybe creators could choose which type of copyright they register; doesn't really matter.

Personal copyrights would be held for the lifetime of the creator, so that they can maintain complete artistic control over their creation. But none of this "plus x number of years after they die" shit. You die, your shit goes public domain, because once the creator is dead, no member of the general public has a greater claim to a creation than any other.

Corporate copyrights would be held for as long as the corporation continues to make the work or product available for sale, plus or minus a reasonably small number of years (1-5ish, I'd say, but I'd be open to arguments on this). After all, if the company isn't selling what you're copying, you're not actually hurting their bottom line. However, as long as the company continues selling what they've copyrighted, they can keep the copyright forever. Companies deserve to be rewarded for creating something that has such lasting impact or permanent usefulness.

I think this system balances the interests of artists maintaining creative control of their work, keeping the profit motive intact, but also incentivizing better archiving practices on the part of companies and/or allowing enthusiasts to main archives of works when it won't actually have a material impact on the profits of companies that hold copyrights. This system even gives major production companies a reason to consider allowing creators to maintain control over the company-owned works that they created--companies may gamble on allowing a writer, singer, or a director to keep the copyrights of their own works as a way of protecting their longer-term interests. But then they would have to license those works on terms that are satisfactory to the creators. Maybe we could even reverse the trend of record labels bleeding musicians dry.

Of course, there's a loophole that someone could create something under an artistic/intellectual copyright even if their motives are entirely monetary, but the best way for almost anyone to monetize something, if that's all they care about, is to sell it to a corporation anyway. And if nobody's buying...meh. The length of the copyright on a work nobody is interested in is largely a moot point.

WriteBrainedJR wrote:Personal copyrights would be held for the lifetime of the creator, so that they can maintain complete artistic control over their creation. But none of this "plus x number of years after they die" shit. You die, your shit goes public domain, because once the creator is dead, no member of the general public has a greater claim to a creation than any other.

No, the greater of 50 years or lifetime. It's perfectly reasonable for an artist near-death to create something specifically to leave as a legacy to their children/spouses (spice?), for example "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess (who recovered afterwards), or Raul Julia performing in "Street Fighter". But Creating for the generations you could never even meet? Yeah, no, f that.

WriteBrainedJR wrote:Personal copyrights would be held for the lifetime of the creator, so that they can maintain complete artistic control over their creation. But none of this "plus x number of years after they die" shit. You die, your shit goes public domain, because once the creator is dead, no member of the general public has a greater claim to a creation than any other.

No, the greater of 50 years or lifetime. It's perfectly reasonable for an artist near-death to create something specifically to leave as a legacy to their children/spouses (spice?), for example "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess (who recovered afterwards), or Raul Julia performing in "Street Fighter". But Creating for the generations you could never even meet? Yeah, no, f that.

Children/spouses have no artistic claim to the work of a relative. If you're working for their profit, incorporate and use a commercial copyright.

It seems that you think you have some right to other people's creative output. Why?edit: In this post I seem to have overreached, and now I can't find specifically what it was that triggered this response. (It was a general sense from some previous posts that protection of intellectual property should be discouraged.)

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

ucim wrote:It seems that you think you have some right to other people's creative output. Why?

Jose

It's a trade-off between incentives to create new useful things via monopoly aided profits, and the public good of eventual access to your invention. For example, I would like the cure for stomach cancer to eventually be released to the public domain. Wouldn't you? Also whatever bullshit is going on in IT Patents needs a rebalancing between public good and subsidizing inventions. There's no point to the patent system if it's worse than granting no monopoly protection at all. Some people get too uppity, and think the tail should wag the dog. They don't realize that Patents/trademarks are a privilege granted to the people. It can be taken away/diminished.

sardia wrote:It's a trade-off between incentives to create new useful things via monopoly aided profits, and the public good of eventual access to your invention.

Yes, I get this argument about patents. However, it has no application to trademarks (who was talking about trademarks?) and only partly overlaps with copyright - where the underlying work is useful as opposed to creative (while it's a false dichotomy to have to choose between the two).

Therefore, be careful what you wish for.

Can you come up with laws and concepts that would govern a gramophone while not affecting a love song? If those laws were enacted, and you were an evil corporation, could you fix it so the "other" rule would apply to whatever it is you want to protect? Rinse and repeat.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

ucim wrote:It seems that you think you have some right to other people's creative output. Why?

Jose

You appear to have mistaken me for someone with ambition.

I just don't acknowledge anyone else's right to my own writing, blood relations be damned. If for some reason I become a famous poet after I die, I don't see any good reason for the descendants of my cousins to profit from that because they had no part in creating the poetry. I don't much care if anyone reads my poetry, either, but if the choice is between making it easier to read or having it profit people with no creativity of their own, I choose the former.

Descendants of your cousins, no. However, I would think that if you died leaving behind underage children who were financially reliant upon you for support, you would want to provide for them till they were finished with school. That is why I would support a fifty year term (from date of publication) but not the hundred-year-or-more term that seems to be the recent standard.

ijuin wrote:Descendants of your cousins, no. However, I would think that if you died leaving behind underage children who were financially reliant upon you for support, you would want to provide for them till they were finished with school. That is why I would support a fifty year term (from date of publication) but not the hundred-year-or-more term that seems to be the recent standard.

why? if i work at a burger joint, as a university professor, or neuro surgeon, my children don't get anything either after i stop working, for whatever reason.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

speising wrote:why? if i work at a burger joint, as a university professor, or neuro surgeon, my children don't get anything either after i stop working, for whatever reason.

To be fair, in a service or manufacturing role, your contribution to society ends the moment you stop working. With a creative production, further benefit accrues to society every time someone new comes across your work, which can continue theoretically indefinitely. It then becomes a question of how to split that ongoing benefit fairly to sufficiently incentivise people to engage in creative endeavours.

Clearly a lot has gone wrong to give rise to patent trolling and the like, but there is a baby in the bathwater.

ucim wrote:It seems that you think you have some right to other people's creative output. Why?

Jose

It seems like you think you have some right to stop people from speaking/writing/etc something that someone has already spoken/written/etc before.

We know why you think that, and any discussion of copyright is all about the benefits that someone or another might get if we grant such a right to restrict speech, but don’t forget that the default state of affairs absent any rules we invent to the contrary is that anyone can copy anything they damn well please, so it is you who want to restrict that freedom who need to justify why that is better than the alternative.

ijuin wrote:However, I would think that if you died leaving behind underage children

Not applicable.

You know quite well that I was speaking of a hypothetical situation for the purpose of debating general policy, in the sense of “if you did have children, then what I propose might be in your interest”. The usual form of rebuttal would be to describe why it would not be in your interest within the boundaries of the scenario, rather than to dismiss the scenario unless the scenario itself is so wildly inappropriate that it would apply to no one realistically.

Pfhorrest wrote:It seems like you think you have some right to stop people from speaking/writing/etc something that someone has already spoken/written/etc before.

Not me personally, but society. And not just anything that someone has already spoken/etc before, but only certain kinds of creative output.

Absent rules, the default state is anarchy. Civilization is (arguably) an improvement over that, and civilization depends on (well chosen) rules, written or un-.

I will loosely define creative works for now as those whose expression is non-trivial, non-obvious, insightful, unusual, useful, particularly engaging, or otherwise stand out from the crowd of ordinary utterances. There's plenty of fault to be found with this quick definition, but it intended to cover the things we generally consider as creative works, be they artistic or inventive, and I'm leaving unaddressed (for example) the issue of whether new life forms would fall under this rubric.

Reasons for copy restrictions would include:

1: Encouraging the creator to be creative. This includes preventing the discouragement of the creator, which is likely if the creator's work (both at the moment and up to the moment) can be easily co-opted by another.

2: Protecting the attributions inherent in creative work. This includes the identification of a trademark with a product, identification of a poem with its creator, identification of an ode with its subject, and (controversially) identification of a medium with its player.

3: Protecting the emotional content of emotional works. If you write a touching love song to your S.O., and Toyota finds it would be a great theme song to sell SUVs, making that association could destroy the emotional value of the song to you and to your S.O. Whatever creative work you do, you should have the right to prevent it from being used by a politician, company, movement, or other group you hate.

4: Encouraging other people to create their own works, instead of merely copying the existing body of work.

5: Encouraging the dissemination of knowledge (as opposed to the keeping of trade secrets)

6: Protecting the income stream (notice this is far down the list) of somebody who has done the creative work that merits it. If a song or invention has commercial value, the creator should be able to reap that value.

7: Respecting the idea of property, and the ability of a property owner to give, rent, lease, or otherwise transfer such property to others, including their family, including upon death.

Now, none of these are hard and fast - that's the nature of creative works, and also the nature of life itself. But they are the framework (such as I can think of it in a few moments) behind the idea of copyright and patent (and even trademark) protection.

It is based on these ideas that I justify that this is better than the alternative (of everything always and forever being in the public domain).

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

Pfhorrest wrote:It seems like you think you have some right to stop people from speaking/writing/etc something that someone has already spoken/written/etc before.

Not me personally, but society. And not just anything that someone has already spoken/etc before, but only certain kinds of creative output.

Don't pretend that you don't always defend copyright law yourself. As for "But the majority believes it, so we can't not force it on the minority!" - no, if something is wrong it is wrong whether the majority believes it or not. Society believes what schools tell them, and what you wrote is what we were all told in school. It's literally just the standard argument in favor of copyright - people who have rejected it have rejected it because they've already thought about it, and decided it's wrong. Just like we have realized large portions of our history education was deliberate misinformation, many people have realized large portions of our economic education was propaganda, as was large portions of our political education.

Your pulling out the default reasons for why people say copyright is necessary is the equivalent of trying to explain to people that the first Thanksgiving was actually proof that Europeans settlers had a friendly, sharing relationship with Native Americans.